SUV on Glacier: “Am I Doing Something Wrong?”

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SUV on Glacier: “Am I Doing Something Wrong?”

Arngrímur Hermannsson, manager of tour operator Ice Explorer, was stunned when he encountered a family driving a small rental SUV on Langjökull glacier on Sunday. “I asked [the driver] what he was doing. He responded: ‘Am I doing something wrong?’”

“I explained to him that he was putting himself in great danger,” Arngrímur told Iceland Review. “After three days of constant rain, the glacier is not only very slippery, it’s full of big cracks.”

Photo: Arngrímur Hermannsson.

“You need special spiked tires and expertise to travel around glaciers on vehicles,” Arngrímur added. “There are no warning signs by the glacier, but common sense says that a glacier is not a playground for small cars on summer tires.”

Arngrímur was taking group of 80 tourists on a tour of the glacier on specialized super jeeps when he noticed the SUV, far up on the icecap. The man, a foreign tourist traveling with his wife and three children, had driven along a road used by tour operators.

“The access to Langjökull is good and when people travel on their own on rental cars they try to do everything themselves,” Arngrímur told ruv.is. After the conversatin with him, the family father decided to drive back down from the glacier.